Tag Archives: Letting go

Hi guys. Today I want to talk a little bit about the topic of letting go of our fears of abandonment. I think it’s a really important subject when delving into love addiction and co-dependency, and fear of abandonment is one of the main things that prevents people from getting out of unhealthy relationships.

The idea of being abandoned is scary. Nobody wants to be left alone to fend for themselves. As humans, we are social creatures, and having other people and even animals in our lives is comforting and part of being human. The issue then, is when our fear of being alone – a reasonable fear – becomes so deep that it prevents us from being independent. We can be independent people without having to give up healthy relationships. What we have to strive for there is balance. Continue reading →

This may sound counter-intuitive, but in order for your intentions to manifest, you must be willing to let go of form. By form I mean any physical restrictions or parameters in which you are encasing your visions and your dreams. Chances are, you don’t even realize you’re doing it, though often it’s radical letting go that kicks the flow of manifestation into high gear.

At the beginning of the year I set an intent to build a thriving online business to allow for maximum mobility in my life. However, I live in Los Angeles in a beautiful bungalow apartment that I also use for my work. I see clients here for private yoga and Thai yoga massage. I love this space as do my clients, but it’s expensive, and all of my resources go into maintaining my existence here.

Last week I had to face the harsh reality that due to circumstances beyond my control, it is no longer feasible to remain in this apartment. The moment of awareness hit me suddenly, and I knew in my heart that the answer was to let it go and begin working on my mobile life sooner than I anticipated. I could see that my attachment to my apartment was restricting me from taking risks and plowing forward, and the only thing that made sense was to release it, rather than racking my brain and going further into debt to keep it.

This was not an easy decision as the impact is great on me and on many of the people I serve. However, it opens up the opportunity to work with my clients in their homes, meet new clients that would prefer in-home services, and branch out to teach more classes and workshops throughout the city, thus spreading the wealth of what I offer.

As soon as I gave my notice, I felt a flood of relief and a surge of creative inspiration. Though it’s scary, I know it’s the right thing to do. Only a few days later, I was able to confirm an amazing offer from one of my clients to go to Hong Kong for a week and assist him with yoga therapy while he travels. Hello mobile life!

Here are some suggestions for allowing intuitive realizations to speak more loudly in your life:

Open yourself to guidance through daily prayer and meditation.

Practice surrendering your questions, fears, goals, and visions every day to the Universe through journal writing.

For women, make time each week to do things that please you and activities that move your body, such as yoga and dance. Your feminine energy is awakened through pleasure and movement, keeping you connected to grace and inspiration.

When answers come, don’t second-guess yourself. If it’s a big decision, talk it out with a trusted friend, someone that really understands you and can listen. Pray about it, surrender it, sleep on it, and do what you feel guided to do the next morning.

Know that whatever form it is you’re attached to might be keeping you from something better that is just around the corner. Be willing to release your current reality in order to allow the Universe to fulfill your desires.

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If you need guidance on meditation, connecting with your intuition, or any of the practices I outlined above, please consider joining me for Soul-Care Sessions. I’m here to listen and help you live a more authentic life.

You know how when you’re at the grocery store, gazing at that skillfully stacked display of lemons looking for just the right one, and then you find it? You pluck it from it’s snug little piece of time and space and then suddenly, lemons are flying and you’re doing your best impression of a circus clown juggler in the middle of the produce aisle, lemons everywhere and people gawking in shock and awe. Yep, that’s me right now, mid-flail, lemons flying, people gawking.

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” they always say. How often have we heard that? How often have I heeded that sage piece of wisdom? I find I’m pretty good at making lemonade, usually anyway. Why is it that even though I have the perfect recipe, sometimes it just tastes awful? One day I’m going through life with the precise balance of sweetness to tart, buzzing along on a lemonade high and then—whammo—I take a swig filled with seeds and pulp, the sugar isn’t quite mixed in and it’s grainy and sour in my mouth. And all of a sudden I’m all, WTF?

I stop and lemonade comes spewing from my mouth. I’m all sticky with my face puckered, frozen and unable to move. I do a quick run down of all my lemons: work – good, love life – good, family – good, or at least it was good until lemons started flying. Hmmm, I’m stumped.

So why is it that all of my perfectly piled lemons suddenly plummeted to the floor, all domino-like. What happened? The truth is, I don’t know. And that’s even more frustrating than having to attempt the five lemon toss-and-catch maneuver in the midst of everything life has going on right now. How is it that I thought I had all my lemons in a row, and suddenly they aren’t?

It would be so much easier if I could just pin point the exact reason chaos has ensued, identifying the exact unripe lemon in the bunch, but, I can’t. So now what? What does one do when all the tricks they have to balance their lemons stop working?

After several days of attempting to gather my lemons, only to drop one as I picked up another and hoping to stack them again as quickly as possible, (I mean who has time for this, right?) I realized I just needed to sit down and let my lemons be.

I have a lot of lemons. I always seem to. I’ve never been a one lemon at a time kind of girl. Most of us aren’t, really, and sometimes when you juggle, you’re bound to drop one. My usual trick is to pick that baby up and go right back to juggling. And sometimes that trick isn’t as seamless as we’d like, especially when it’s multiple lemons. I’m a great juggler but today I realized that instead of attempting to gather all my lemons at once, I need to stop, pick up one lemon at a time, clean it off, check for bruises and put it back on the shelf and let it be.

“What if I can’t catch them? What if one gets lost? What if one gets ruined?” There I was, standing in the grocery store aflutter and filled with worry and doubt. “If I don’t have the right amount of lemons, my lemonade won’t taste right and all will be lost.” This is what we do when our lemons fall; we often panic and in a frenzy attempt to pick them all up at once and try and stack them again. The fact is, we might just have too many lemons. We might need to let a few go, some might not yet be ripe and we should leave them for a bit longer and some might need more attention than we can give when we have so many, and the only way to see that is to step back from the produce stand, breathe and wait until all the lemons settle.

If I really think about it, I’ve dropped a few lemons in my life and I’m still here. I’ve mixed a few bad batches of lemonade and if after adding a little more of this and a little more of that it still tasted bad, well all I had to do was dump it out and start over again. Sometimes it wasn’t my recipe, sometimes I just picked a few unripe lemons, and there is no need to panic. Even if it feels like it’s the last thing I should be doing, with lemons flying in the air and all, but it’s what I really need to do, take a break from the juggling, and let the lemons fall where they will.

I often use my daily meditation practice as a way to surface any underlying negative emotions and clear any resistance that may be holding my energy vibration down. The analogy I like to use: you are naturally like a cork bobbing on the surface of the water – you don’t have to do much to keep the cork floating happily along, because that is its inherent nature. Negative thoughts and emotions, however, act like a hand that’s holding down the cork. If you simply release the negative emotion, the cork (and your vibrational frequency) will naturally rise back to your true nature – a state of joy, enthusiasm, and love. Any emotional state other than this is not only unnatural, but research shows that chronic negative emotion and stress is toxic to our cells and hazardous to our health.

So being acutely aware of negative emotion is the first step to recognizing and releasing it. For this article, I want to focus on a particularly insidious emotion – guilt. Guilt is one of those tricky emotions that’s hard to pinpoint and even harder to root out. In its broadest definition, guilt is “an emotion that occurs when a person believes that they have compromised his or her own standards.” But I’d argue that that definition is not nearly subtle enough for the type of guilt that most people experience (especially women, who in my experience are more prone to obsess and fret than men).

For instance, most people might feel guilty about big offenses like stealing, cheating, or lying. Negative emotion is not always a bad thing if it helps you identify your moral compass and course correct – it’s called having a conscience. But what about when our guilt meter goes into overdrive and we start feeling guilty about the unrealistic expectations we’ve set for ourselves? For instance, I recently started working part-time in order to devote more time to my family and writing. To be honest, I love my lifestyle and am much happier as a result. But, I sometimes feel guilty and find myself saying “you’ve worked so hard to get to this point in your career and now you’re getting off the ladder” or “you’re a professional, and you’re not meeting your full earning potential.” Even though my husband and extended family fully support my decision, I feel my own internal sense of pressure and guilt. And on and on for goals and expectations that only I’ve set for myself.

After some reflection, and A LOT of meditation, I’ve finally come to peace with many decisions like this, and have found some strategies that help me cope when my guilt meter goes into overdrive.

Get some perspective.

It’s easy to get caught up in the moment and feel negative emotion over petty things that probably aren’t going to matter in the grand scheme of your life. When you find yourself feeling guilty over something small, just take a step back and ask yourself, “Is this going to matter in 5 years?” If the answer is yes, then by all means reflect on it more after the initial wave of negative emotion has passed. Even in instances where the guilt is about something significant, it helps to get some distance. But if the answer is no, then stop wasting the emotional energy and feeling bad. For instance, no one is going to remember or care in 5 years if you made cookies from scratch or bought them at the store for that charity bake sale. But yet these are the small things that women tell me they feel guilty about. In these cases, it’s important to get some perspective and focus your thoughts and energy on things that are really going to matter in the long run. Life’s too short to focus on anything but the big stuff and the stuff that makes you happy. Which leads me to my next point.

Use happiness as your barometer.

If you are feeling guilty about something you’ve done or said (or haven’t done or haven’t said), for example, use this simple test to determine if you need to take action on your guilt: what decision or action makes me happier (now and in the long run)? It’s as simple as that. Instead of thinking about what’s expected of you, what people will think, or even what’s best for your friends or family, the most important factor in letting go of your guilt is knowing you took the right path or decision for you. It may sound selfish, but unless you take care of yourself and do what’s best for you, you have nothing to give to anyone else anyway. So never feel guilty about doing something that feels right to you or makes you happy.

Give yourself a break.

It’s easy to sometimes feel guilty and obsess over even the smallest of things. For instance, I recently talked to one mom who felt guilty for not feeding her infant an all-organic diet. She was really worried that it would set him up for illness and health problems later on in life. Certainly, organic foods are beneficial. But when you create an all or none, perfectionist mindset, you’re setting yourself up for failure and guilt. That negative emotion is also creating resistance within you, which prevents the Universe from letting the right solutions come to you in the right way and at the right time. So learn to give yourself a break. This simplistic advice someone once gave me works wonders – just do the best you can, and let the Universe take care of the rest. In this instance, do your best to feed your child healthy a healthy diet, but trust that you don’t always have to get it right to have a healthy, happy child.

Rationalize a decision, and move on.

This is something that guys are really good at (generally speaking) and for some reason comes much harder to women. Guys tend to think more linearly, and once they make a decision, they tend to get lined up with it and justify it to themselves. Women, on the other hand, tend to second guess themselves, and play the “shoulda, coulda, woulda” game. Women tend to look at things from many different angles, which is helpful to a certain point, but when overdone, can lead to indecisiveness and anxiety about a decision. This, in turn, can cause guilt and obsessing over decisions made in the past or things to come in the future. Instead, give yourself the benefit of the doubt that you made the right decision or call based on where you were in your life at that point, and then just move forward. Don’t obsess or over think it.

Remember, chronic guilt is a toxic emotion that can wreck havoc on our physical and psychological health. Using these techniques to pinpoint and root out guilt will help you raise your energy frequency, improve your point of attraction, and more quickly manifest your desires.

You wanted that job – you thought you were the best candidate. You interviewed like a pro. You had letters of recommendation. You know the industry. Then you heard that they chose someone else. Life’s like that.

You saved and saved to go on the cruise of a lifetime – to the very places you have always wanted to go. While on the trip, a hurricane develops in area the ship was planning to go and you are forced to go to the places you have already been – not the exciting places you dreamed of seeing. Life’s like that.

That job that you thought you wanted and didn’t get made you available for a better job that you didn’t previously know about. Going back to searching for jobs, you saw a job that is an even better fit for you – your talents, interests and passions. You interviewed and now have the job of your dreams. Life’s like that.

You break up with someone who has been in your life for years. Though the relationship hasn’t been amazing, it also has been bad. You know you have settled but you felt it was always better to have an average someone than an amazing nobody. But now available, you meet that amazing person who finds you equally amazing. Life’s like that.

Life is as it is. But, we come to it with our expectations – that somehow life should deliver to us exactly what we want and if not, we are disappointed. We take it personally. We think there is some cosmic plan to get us or feel that we must have done something wrong that is now being held against us. We think life is a battle – that there are wins and losses, successes and failures. When really what is happening is that life simply just is.

Life is our classroom. When life goes our way, we celebrate. Celebration is good for the spirit and soul. We develop greater gratitude, energy and passion. And when life doesn’t go our way, we use the event to learn to be better and more capable next time. We can develop greater resilience, endurance and patience. We can develop greater empathy, determination and focus.

If we spend our time getting upset with the things in life that don’t work out, we use all our great energy staying stuck in disappointments instead of allowing life to be, and watching for new opportunities. Life’s events are not personal. It’s a classroom. We are always gathering information to respond in a great, successful and grateful way regardless of what happens. There is always the next moment for something amazing if we watch for it. If we close our minds and our hearts, we’ll miss that next opportunity.

As a greatness coach, I help people discover their unique abilities – their intrinsic greatness – and learn how to show up great, confident, and authentic to what life shares with them. The greatest challenge I see for myself and my clients is that our expectations always seem to color the events in our lives. We ride the highs and the lows. And depending on which place we are at the moment – the high or the low – determines if we love or hate life.

But the only way to live life is to love it. To see its value requires us to shift our perspective from the expectations that life should be as we need them to be, to one where life is as life is – and how it shows up is how we will show up back to it. Tough times will make us stronger. Great times will help us celebrate. Both are our choice. And constant in this choice is that no matter what happens, we realize that life’s like that. It’s not personal – it just is. And when we get to that realization, we don’t need to be overwhelmed by any moment. We then have the awareness to use our best energy to find value and be part of the next amazing life moment.

I guess it’s the fear of the unknown that creates fear in us, the what if’s, I don’t know how to, what if they don’t like it/me, what if I’m not good enough?

Whether we are changing jobs, countries, homes, new schools or simply a new brand of pasta, it is still change. Some of us face it head on and others take the longest route via procrastination to get there because change can be a scary thing!

Even though I have moved countries a few times, I am still faced with that familiar pang in the inner recesses of my solar plexus! How will I find my way along that new road, what if I get lost, I don’t know how to speak that language, I feel exhausted just thinking about how my brain picks and re-picks at the same saga. At these times I try to remember Louise L Hay’s words; “It is only a thought and a thought can be changed”.

I have had to learn to face it more truthfully since having children. If I tell them “change is good for me, well then I better demonstrate it myself! Children in themselves bring remarkable change to us and in doing so teach us to observe ourselves more authentically and with more awareness. I have come to understand that it is just my fear that holds me back. One of my most well etched memories of “practicing what I preach” was at a library where they had a conservationist bring harmless snakes for the kids to see and touch. I told my son who was afraid of the snakes, “the snake won’t bite it’s a harmless brown house snake”. I then had to put my fears aside and hold the snake so that he could see that it wouldn’t bite me. So I did, and overcame my fear of them too. I have to say that some fears are easier to overcome than others and it differs from person to person.

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.” Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym.

The easiest way to embrace the mantra “change is good for me” is to let go of your fears and your inhibitions and go with the flow of where life takes you. We have to start trusting ourselves, although it might seem difficult, trust is all about surrendering. You might find that when we are not trying to control every aspect of our lives, we invite opportunity, interesting experiences and change happens almost seamlessly, it’s as though we begin to see things more clearly, differently with less trepidation. I have come to understand that when I coined the mantra to help my son it not only served him, but it taught me to go with the flow too.

Just relax. Let it go. Don’t worry about it.

I’ve heard and read that advice a thousand times over, but it never made sense to me before. I knew what the words meant, but I didn’t actually get it because I couldn’t feel it.

Things are different for me now though and it’s in large part due to yoga and meditation. Yoga provided me with a quieter mind, which led to a curiosity about the infinite space that was revealed to me in the new silence of my mind. That new silence then grew naturally into a daily meditation practice.

Letting go of expectations around and my attachment to outcomes in relation to things, people and relationships is something I’m learning how to live. I’m not saying it’s always easy, or that it happens instantly, but sometimes it is and it does.

What I’m saying is that now I understand why it makes sense to let go and I feel confident in being able to do so when it is what will serve me best.

As I become more aware of and accustomed to the following three understandings, letting go becomes easier and even preferable in most situations:

† I have everything I need and can access it at will by simply closing my eyes, returning to breath and turning inward to watch emotions and feelings as they flow through me.

† Everything is temporary.

† Connections and relationships don’t end or stop existing because of time or distance. This is because time and distance are simply illusions.

The days I feel the happiest are the days when I’m able to relax into the flow and remain present with my breath in each moment.

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Life is challenging for us all. We are in the constant flux of change and rearranging ourselves around life to be able to go with its flow. Life is challenging us all to grow each and every day, as there is always some obstacle that will present itself to us which will create fear and anxiety. If we run away from our challenges life will continue to get harder, not necessarily because the lessons get harder, but because we are not developing the skills we need to deal with the challenges. Each challenge we face gives us the opportunity to run from it or we can choose to get deliberate about it, take it seriously and look it in the face. This is a great way to develop courage.

6 Ways to Develop Courage:

1)Set your standards: No one can set your standards in life for you but you. Your standards reflect you state of self-love. If you love yourself you will encourage yourself to face your fears and get deliberate about growing in this life. You will not take the easy way out but rather you will choose to do the path of hard work, knowing your hard work is where the rewards of life come from.

2) Evaluate where you get lost: It is easy to get lost in life when we are feeling vulnerable, without love or are dealing with rejection. This is not a time to shrink, nor is it a time to get puffed up in your ego and behave as if you are certain when you are not. It is simply a time to get deliberate on examining the path that has led you to this current state of pain and become thoughtful about improving yourself and your skills.

3) Stand your ground: There is something deeply self-loving about standing your ground. This isn’t about being stubborn, it is about standing in truth of who you are and in what you will or will not tolerate. When you stand your ground you are making a statement of your value. You let the world know you have limits to what you are willing to accept in your life.

4) Enliven Your Worth: Your inner world, your self-love is your place of worth. Each time you are courageous and you surpass a challenge you once feared you enliven and expand your sense of worth. Your worth has no limits as long as you are facing your fears. Each fear you face aids in you developing more trust in yourself and you become more centered and confident as a person.

5) Stay away from drama: The healthier you become the more pointed you become about staying away from drama. Drama, as you grow, will no longer fit into your standards. There simply is no room for it. You recognize that peace is much more powerful than noise.

6) Letting go: You must learn to let go of having the need to be everything to everyone. You must get serious about loving yourself and creating a life that comes from a quiet confidence. You must let go of what you have no control over and refocus on what you can control. As you let go you learn to let each soul walk their path. When you let go you learn to have the courage to face life on your own knowing that whatever leaves your life will soon be replaced by something better and more fulfilling.

By facing challenges in life head on you will become courageous and resilient. You learn that you can take the hard road, you can succeed in the climb through your fears and vulnerabilities and you can reach the top. You see that it takes a lot of effort to climb up the mountain of fear but it takes no effort at all to fall down it and quit. If you quit or if you do not try you cannot develop courage. To develop courage you must be deliberate.

Little Life Message: You cannot expect anyone to take responsibility for your welfare. You must be deliberate and courageous in taking care of yourself first.

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Dr. Sherrie Campbell is the author of Loving Yourself and is a licensed Psychologist with more than nineteen years of clinical training and experience. She provides practical tools to help people overcome obstacles to self-love and truly achieve an empowered life. Click here to get her free article on “Five Ways to Make Love the Common Ground in Your Communication.” She is a featured expert on a variety of national websites and has a successful practice in Southern California. Receive free insights from Sherrie and to be involved in her Facebook community of others looking to improve their relationship. For more information visit http://www.sherriecampbellphd.com.

When you choose forgiveness, you commit an act of love to yourself as well as the person you’re forgiving. To forgive is to liberate yourself from the poison of anger and resentment, as well as release the individual who has wronged you from the guilt that may be weighing them down. Here are 5 inspirational quotes from people who recognized the power of forgiveness:

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” — Louis B. Smedes

“Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?” — Abraham Lincoln

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.” — Martin Luther King